Last year, European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes raised questions about the strange state of the European music market. “Why is it possible to buy a CD from an online retailer and have it shipped to anywhere in Europe, but it is not possible to buy the same music, by the same artist, as an electronic download with similar ease?” she asked. “Why do pan-European services find it so difficult to get a pan-European license? Why do new, innovative services find licensing to be such a hurdle?”
This year, she intends to do something about the problem, which has resulted in low growth rates for digital content sales. Kroes, who has already taken on Microsoft and Intel, wants to move Europe’s digital music business toward a common market that crosses country borders. If a company like Apple wants to launch an online music store, it shouldn’t need to open dozens of separate shops that can each serve only one country. Instead, a single set of licenses ought to be good enough to provide service across Europe.
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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica
